Too long; dint read: You, the community needs to step up to get involved or else this project will die a slow tragic death.

The story of a problematic relationship being dragged along its limping feet because the two parties in it refuses to acknowledge the problem in front of them in hopes that maintaining the illusion of normalcy can make the problem disappear is a tragedy waiting to happen. We are all too familiar but this is what openkore's situation is.

The truth is that it is neither new and sadly is not just a phase but has become a fact of life for Openkore 3 years now. Openkore at the moment has about 5 active devs (none of whom who plays the game) and even less moderators (maybe 3). Posts from newly registered users someone takes weeks to approve. At one point was in months. The idea was to reduce newbie questions from flooding the forum but it was not a real solution as it was just fixing the symptom. In reality it was worse as without proper manpower (hey we have real life too) to moderate (which by the way is a shitty job that not many wants to do) even good post gets ignored and that damages the health of the project more than it solves problems. And yet that is only part of the problem. You may ask why not recruit more mods? But where from?

Look around the support forums and you will see large number of questions being unanswered. The community is supposed to help itself, not just the job of the mods, admins or developers. A lot of original posters do not even reply back. I get the feeling that after correct direction was provided (say to obtain server info)no shit was given. The same question reappears 3 days later.

Then there is the obsession with macros. It is probably the most active section yet it still falls prey to the same issue as the support section but that is however not the main issue. The obsession means many features (some which can be considered core or important functions) gets solved in a half assed way while a true solution (through the main codebase and plugins) get ignored while it. Macros were designed for simple workarounds and have massive limitations (eg: macros break when disconnects happen) when dealing with complex requirements. Plugins are supposed to resolve that need yet the plugin archive is awfully sparse and woefully outdated.

Which comes to the final and worst problem - leeches. Our attitude towards leeches has always to demonize them because they do not give back to the community but the expectation for all users to come back and contribute is silly and unrealistic. Yet, there should be more than a mere handful of people who maintain the project for such a large userbase. I feel that a large part of the skilled userbase refuse to contribute back for fear of losing their edge in the game and it is selfish. Often you see posts which states "problem solved" and nothing else or worse brags about the solution with an emoticon at the end of the post. This attitude is what lead us here in the first place and if it continues the project can die at a whim's notice. The devs do not even play, do you understand the implication? Given enough frustration, they can just don't care and that will be the end of openkore. Have fun trying to make anything work when things break (as if openkore isn't breaking down as it is).

I would like to point out to the zenny sellers; look, you guys are very skilled users probably with deeply intricate setups. You know openkore and you have utilized it to your benefit, monetary benefit and probably not just pocket change either. It is time you give back because you have the most to lose.

I am surprised the project survived this long. We are maintaining a software that is running at the minimum it requires to work and many other non critical components are left breaking down (tables for renewal for example) and we are helpless to resolve it. It's time to step up because the alternative is openkore dying before RO. Maybe this is how it is, it is the life story of many open source projects. Prove me wrong though.

We need someone to test and commit submitted patches << we REALLY need this

We need moderators, and maybe just a few colaborators with privileges to approve posts.

We need developers, this is obvious

We need local server supporters (bRO, iRO, pRO, etc.)

We need local moderators (the ones who will only have rights to moderate that designated area)

Pre-approving posts is fine if we have enough people to review them.I can moderate any area, test and commit patches, support bRO tables and also make openkore work with latest bRO patches if they don't change the weekly update method.

Also, I translated this topic and posted as a global announcement at openkore.com.br. Some time ago we had a huge amount of members wishing to help the community, with some luck we can get some of them to help here.

And I would like to offer moderator status for any staff member from here at openkore.com.br, you can just create an account there and PM me here.

I am not sure what I should write. I can't develop nor do I have the time to learn it nowadays. I only contributed an updated map, answered some macros and general questions but you could count me in by letting me moderate the fRO forum here (full of misplaced, plain right wrong threads like ppl talking about level 120 when we don't even have renewal nor lvl99+) as well as contributing the next tablepack for it in some weeks when I am going to update mine (my own is several months old despite weekly new items since it runs fine even with the basic version).

Most of my macros are no use to the general user because they are hand tailored for me and would need correction for other chars/people or have a very specific and low usability for most people like a macro that helps my bot leave one specific map in which teleport routing bugs out into an endless teleport spam which he only enters when accidently getting lured into a portal on his lockmap by a monster. Then there are server specific and easily distinguishable macros I can't make public like my KvM macro which made undistinguishable would still not help most people for the following reason. Posting macros doesn't help most ppl, they will use it but not learn from it, they are dependant on fully working releases. People who try to create their own macros and ask for help/suggestions here will learn from it.

I can very well understand your point about people that even make money from it while not contributing their code since those could be the developers this project needs since the botting community most probably has aged as much as the player base and can't afford the time anymore to learn.

i'm a novice developer..but i haven't learnt perl yet..i only have knowledge of c/c++ and i am pretty good at that.If i could be of any help, i'll try and solve them as soon as i learn perl..my exams are going on right now , so maybe by the middle of may i will be able to help

I wouldn't mind moderating/approving posts as a local moderator (or trashing posts if you decide to remove the approval process). This is the only forum in which i've seen a post approval process. Why was it implemented anyways? To reduce leech posts or "can't you just do it for me cause i don't want to learn, i just want the benefits" type posts? Mods got tired of trashing posts?- but yeah i'd moderate iRO, since I bot on it.

iMikeLanceI've gave you Moderator Rights.I'll watch you from time to time, as I do with all the newcomers.

Also. Please, Change my rank at bRO forums.Thanks.

NicodareusThere is one Rule that I keep in mind. The one that is Moderator or any other should have some good point of "respect" from our community members. (There where some incidents before. So I only approve people when any of current team members say to do so).

jamI'm do not leting C/C++ coders to our code base, unless you have some great ideas on our side projects (there is a lot of them in our SVN), or you can significantly improve our XS part of openkore itself.If you want so, please submit a diff/patch, and I will add you to our Team. (For Example, Improve our Path Finder algo).

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